A Salamander

Though we still live within a sort of cultural mandate defined by the progressivist
historian's legacy, a mandate which is also that of the avant-garde, we have also
become more familiar with the nature of its destruction. From this familiarity, new
content and modes of storytelling have developed that relocate our attention to
alternative economies, alternative means of distribution as moments of freedom
or places to redefine our responsibility with one another. In fact, it might be
argued that many of the people Lippard included in her compendium of conceptual
art (note) were actually focused on the art object,
adapting it into new forms which could allow for a pursuit of life exchange.

The above small exhibition includes five different artists, each of whom could be
discussed as containing alternative economies as part of the distribution or content
of their work. In some cases, to discuss their work as a process of exchange and
interaction is to speak of their relations to others, of their ideas concerning
responsibility and community. In other aspects, it is to refer to the act of simply
being alive, a sort of existential statement and means of empowerment through an
acceptence of one's life into art and art into life.

Ben Kinmont

(note)Lucy Lippard, Six Years: the dematerialization of the art object.
New York: Praeger. 1973.